I woke to the sound of the new Moon. It was calling me to make my intentions. There was a moment of interaction between technology, the cosmic dance of the universe and a little esoteric dreaming.

My phone alarm went off at the same time as the calendar app told me the New Moon had risen (in my neck of the woods). Now I am awake and it is time to dream, to plan and make my intentions. I have tried and often failed, to keep a moon cycle going this year. I plan on the New Moon and the ideas should begin to bear fruit on the Full Moon. The idea is good, but the flesh is so often unwilling.

I am doing my yearly review and next year preview at the moment. That is being neatly tied-up and finishing with a flourish and a couple of posts the week. The Winter Solstice will be my finishing point for that. In which case, why bother with the New Moon intentions thing?

When I looked at the date for the relevant Full Moon the calendar told me 2nd January. That is just as the Gregorian New Year gets going. In the past, I often found myself planning my New Year once my head cleared several days into it. Most diaries and journals I start rarely have an entry before the 6th.

Not 2018

I am using my New Moon intention as a plan, prompt and put into place. When the Full Moon comes around, I will be ready for 2018. My yearly review and preview will be sorted and the plans from that will feed into this New Moon Intention.

The New Moon intentions will be my short term implementation of my yearly review/preview. It is the first part of breaking down the big picture plan for 2018. I don’t want to get to the 3rd, 4th or 5th of January and think, okay, so what do I want to do this year. I will be building on what I have learnt in 2017 (my review) and already doing what I have planned.

Despite the Solstice, Christmas and traditional New Year celebrations, I will be ready on the 1st January.

This morning I will be completing my unified theory of productivity. From idea to content to publication to archiving – everything connected and organised and working together. After years of research, trial and error I am close to achieving productivity nirvana.

Just a couple of tweaks and I will be there. Many highlighters, notepads and apps gave their lives in this pursuit. They will be remembered.

I will finally be able to sit back and see how all my work is connected and flows seamlessly from stage to stage.

Any creative task or project requires a series of steps. The steps will vary depending on your goal for the completed project, but in general, the following overview is pretty accurate:

Idea

Creation

Refinement

Completion

Selling / Promotion

We don’t need to finish something as soon as we start it. The process above doesn’t have to be completed for each project, or idea, before we can contemplate another. Some ideas flow simply from beginning to end. That’s fine. If they do, go with the flow. At other times, that doesn’t happen. We’ll get tired. We may get frustrated that our hands aren’t doing what our brain is telling them to do.

When I feel very creative, it seems like I have tapped into some cosmic stream of ideas. When this happens I need to capture them and work on them. It could be musical themes, streams of powerful prose or ideas for this here blog. Quite often when I get into this creative zen zone I don’t just get one idea… or two. The ideas don’t stop, they keep coming. It’s like I have sent out a message into the universe for an idea and I am getting replies from every sentient soul that ever existed. So I capture them to a level that I will be able to return to them when I get more time.

When this happens the thought of completing an idea is far off. This is the capture time. Here the wild creative thoughts are to be tamed for later use. We can batch ideas. If we feel creative then focus on creative tasks. When the words are flowing and you finish that blog post, or that scene or that journal page… keep going, begin another. You don’t need to finish what you begin here, but keep writing. Keep writing until the words dry up. This may mean starting several projects. It’s batching the creative process.

Sometimes creativity isn’t flowing. Because, as hard as it is to believe when the ideas are flowing, sometimes the ideas flow like mountains don’t! The words aren’t coming and the paint is simply drying on our palette. When this happens, what other jobs in the creative process can be done? Do you need to jot down ideas? What about updating your blog or website? Has that twitter icon been the same one for five years? Do the accounts need doing? Are all your listings on Etsy up to date? Just as we can batch creative tasks, we can batch our admin type actions for when the creative ideas aren’t flowing.

We can edit when we can’t write. We can take photos of our art and share on social media when we can’t paint. We can tell others of the work we have finished when other projects remain incomplete due to a creative barren spell.

When you batch similar activities together you get a lot more done in the long run. When creativity strikes, be creative, when it isn’t there, try admin.

Make the most of when we feel creative, but make the most of when we don’t too.